[This letter is included in Murphey’s “collected writings”
because it shows his rejection of the intolerant restrictions on speech imposed
on white Americans in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.Evelyn Whitcomb, then a member of the
Kansas
state board of education, had apparently made an ethnic generalization of the
type that, though not egregious, was so forbidden in those years.]

April 2, 1989

Public Forum

The
Wichita
Eagle-Beacon

Dear Editor:

After the
media and most of the state’s politicians have denounced Evelyn Whitcomb, only
the brave or the foolhardy will rise to her defense.I do so only because I believe that some vitally
important principles are at stake:

1.It is almost certainly true, as a purely
descriptive matter, that all people, no matter what their background, make
ethnic generalizations.Most such
statements are commonly accepted as purely innocent.

2.Generalizations of this sort are in
themselves hardly proof that the speaker is a bigot, unless we are ready to say
that everyone is a bigot.Do we know
from her comment that Mrs. Whitcomb is a bigot?Certainly not.A definition of
“bigotry” that would encompass everyone would lose all its force.

3.Many of these ethnic references are socially
accepted.It was precisely the media who
gave currency, within recent years, to the acronym WASP to refer to “White
Anglo-Saxon Protestants.”Despite the
obviously disparaging connotations of the acronym, it immediately became chic
to use it.

4.A double standard has been interjected into
American life, however, with regard to certain minorities.Unless a reference to them is clearly
laudatory, these minorities are expected to be invisible to the majority of the
population.It is acceptable to speak of
a “Bible-belt fundamentalist,” which mixes a geographical and a religious
description, but Evelyn Whitcomb’s reference is considered intolerable.

5.We are in great danger unless we come to
realize that this double standard is enforced by means that echo totalitarian
methods:

.First, the ethos reaches down to snatch out
pieces of private, one-on-one conversation, offering no protection to private
discussion.

.Second, any “suspect reference” is met by an
absolutist mentality that allows of no discussion, no explanation, no shades of
gray.

.Third, all balance is lost.In this instance, twenty-eight years of
dedicated public service by Mrs. Whitcomb count for nothing.

.Fourth, the absolutist mentality is allowed
to exercise full sway precisely because so many others conform themselves
instantly to it.Almost no one appears
who has any other opinion.Where were
Mrs. Whitcomb’s many associates in the Republican Party, in the governor’s
office and the Legislature, who certainly know that she is no bigot, when she
needed them most?

.Fifth, the demand is most fundamentally for
thought control.The insistence was upon
beating Mrs. Whitcomb, and anyone else who might ever think of making a similar
comment, into submission.Her sin was in
having the thought at all.It was the
media, not Mrs. Whitcomb, who gave broad currency to her comment.

.Sixth, the offender is expected to confess
and submit to public humiliation as a form of absolution.Only Mrs. Whitcomb’s “apology,” not her
explanation that she is not a bigot, would suffice.The twentieth century has seen this before in
the Soviet Union and, most conspicuously, in Communist
China.

.Seventh, this absolutism is justified because
it is “in a good cause”—in this case, ironically, in support of ethnic
tolerance.We fool ourselves, however,
if we believe that totalitarians ever justify their methods on any other basis.

Those who
have been most forceful in their denunciation of Mrs. Whitcomb no doubt believe
sincerely that they represent the truest ideals of a free society.I hope that all who care about freedom will
give the matter a careful second thought.